Introduction
Whether you are submitting a lab report, writing your dissertation, or giving a group talk, the effective communication of data is heavily dependent upon the way it is presented. You may wish to present each stage of a cloning strategy, illustrate the successful in vitro expression and purification of protein, show the cellular localisation of a fluorescent construct or present some sequencing data. In either case, the gels, micrographs and other images which contain these pieces of data must be presented in a clear and concise manner, without distortion, and must be easily understood by the reader without previous knowledge of your work.
Aim
The aim of this workshop is to create three figures as they would appear in a research paper or dissertation. Figure 1 will show the successful cloning of pET28-gfp as shown through a colony PCR experiment. Figure 2 will show some bioimaging data.
Materials
You will be provided with a scanned image of an agarose gel. In this experiment, a colony PCR was performed to screen for a successful ligation between pET28c (5.3 kb) and gfp (761 bp). With this, you will be provided with a digital copy of the 1kb ladder map.
Next, you will be provided with 3 micrographs showing the cellular localisation of the protein Actin (red channel) and Vinculin (green channel) in myoblast cells.
This workshop has been designed to allow the manipulation and organisation of figures using Microsoft PowerPoint only. Although it is advisable to use more powerful programs such as Adobe Photoshop or Coral Draw, these may not be available.
The files can be downloaded here
(ZIP 2.7 Mb)
Points to consider
What are the dimensions that you want your images to be in your report?
How do you want your images to be arranged relative to each other?
How do you want your images to be labelled, font type/size/colour/labels etc?
Methods
The Gel
1. Drag the gel image into PowerPoint, Right Click {format picture}, Select {tight} if pre 2007 addition.
2. Use the crop tool to remove regions of the image that are unimportant.
3. Set image size (your choice but ensue you keep aspect ratio), Right click {size and position}. Each band should be about 1cm.
Remember that the page width (that you use) is about 14cm so this is the maximum width that a figure should be. Use a measured line to give you an idea how it will look in your report. Ensure that you can clearly see the details of the image (Which may differ depending on your printer). You can adjust the brightness and contrast in PowerPoint, or in Photoshop.
4. Use the insert text box tool to label each band of the ladder and a label for each lane. You can use a line to help align all the labels, all the align feature in PowerPoint on the format tab. Use white boxes to remove unwanted regions such as the ladder (once labelled). Take advantage of the “bring to front/back” tool, this will allow you to cover unwanted regions with white filled - non outlined boxes.
You can add extra details such as arrows to highlight bands of interest if you think it will help you portray your interpretation of the results. Use the arrow toolbar, select the arrow head size, stalk width and colour using the draw tool bar. You can use different types of arrow head or colour to help you to refer to them in the legend.
5. When finished, select all and group together, Right click {group}.
6. Find out the total width of the grouped image, click copy, then use the paste special function in your Microsoft Word document {paste metafile}. Make sure that the pasted image is the same size as the one from your PowerPoint presentation.
7. Set image as tight and centred, Right click {format object}. Add a figure title and legend using the insert caption function in the references tab. You could emphasize the title and legend using italic or bold, any way to differentiate from the main body of text. Remember, all figures should be stand alone. This means a figure could be fully interpreted if seen separately from the remaining document.
The Micrographs
Using these tricks in PowerPoint, try to create a figure like the example in Figure 2 to show the red (Actin), green (Vinculin, and merged channels. Make sure you include a scale bar (you can redraw a thicker line and hide the old one with a black box). Also be aware that in their raw state, the three images are too large to fit in parallel on a page. (remember your printable page width is about 15cm).
When producing these Figures, make sure you include a figure legend, which includes a figure number, title and a brief description of what the data is showing and/or how the data were generated.
Background reading to this session is:
Divan, A (2009). Communication skills for the biosciences – a graduate guide. Oxford University Press. Chapter 11/Preparing tables and Figures.
This chapter has on-line resources associated with it which shows examples of common mistakes made when preparing figures and tables. These can be viewed at:
http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199226351/01student/activities/preparing_figures/page_01.htm
Workshop by Gavin Allsop 2008
for the University of Leeds